There are many reasons to oppose Obama, whose paltry legislative record disqualifies him for the Presidency. That he would cite state legislative experience during a Presidential campaign as a qualification already reveals to this voter how underprepared he is for the Presidency.
But the real reason I oppose him is his wife’s deep connections to WAL-MART. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times published an article about this highly controversial connection in May. According to Sweet, Michelle Obama is no longer connected to the company. But this was not a decision Michelle Obama made on her own volition. Following the lead of her husband’s vague campaign, Michelle Obama quit the company that ties her deeply to WAL-MART. According to Lynn Sweet,
Michelle Obama resigned Tuesday from the board of TreeHouse Foods Inc., a Wal-Mart vendor, eight days after husband and White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he would not shop at the anti-union store.
I guess Obama’s attempt to pander to AFL-CIO union voers in Trenton, NJ, created a conflict with one of the Obama family’s sources of income.
Michelle Obama sat on the Board of this Wal-Mart friendly company since June 27, 2005, or just a few months after Obama was elected to the US Senate. Michelle Obama, also a VP of The University of Chicago Hospitals in charge of “community outreach,” did not have experience in the private sector before serving on the Board of the WAL-MART ally. In fact, she chose to pursue the Board position in order to gain experience in the private sector, and this experience was made available to her after her husband was elected to the US Senate. According to
the London Telegraph,
[S]he has just been re-elected to the board of an Illinois food-processing company, a position she took up two years ago to gain experience of the private sector.
She was reelected to the lucrative post on April 19, 2007, or three months after Barack Obama began actively campaigning for the Presidency.
But how did she obtain the position? According to Lynn Sweet, she undertook the position with the WAL-MART ally in order to gain experience in the private sector. Here is a summary of her experience before serving on the Board of a WAL-MART ally:
A Harvard-trained lawyer, Michelle Obama began her career as an attorney at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin, and later went to work at Chicago City Hall and at the non-profit group Public Allies, a leadership program for young adults.
And she holds the sinecure of part-time VP at the University of Chicago Hospitals while working for the WAL-MART friendly vendor. But if she had no experience in the private sector, why was she elected to the post? Is that not a risk for the company? Or did the company want a link to a US Senator?
Obama, according to Lynn Sweet and to other who reported on his statements before the AFL-CIO in Trenton, NJ, said the following:
On May 14, during an AFL-CIO forum in Trenton, N.J., Sen. Obama was asked about Wal-Mart. “I won’t shop there,” he said. Chief rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) served on the Wal-Mart board between 1986 and 1992.
He also made the these pronouncements, which are reproduced in the London Telegraph story:
As the Illinois senator prepared to join the presidential fray late last year, he threw his weight behind the union-backed campaign against Wal-Mart. He declared that there was a “moral responsibility to stand up and fight” the company and “force them to examine their own corporate values”.
But how can he denounce WAL-MART’s values and claim he would never shop there when his wife has over $100,000 of salary, stocks and benefits from a company that engages in very friendly practices with WAL-MART? According to CBS2 Chicago,
The company, which supplies retail grocery chains with pickles, nondairy powdered creamer and other products, said Wal-Mart was its largest customer last year, according to an SEC filing.
In other words, TreeHouse Foods and WAL-MART are close business partners.
Now the Obamas have not provided compelling answers when asked about this egregious conflict of interest. Here is Michelle Obama:
Barack is gonna say what needs to be said, and it’s not going to, you know, necessarily matter … what I’m doing if it’s not the right thing,” she said. “He’s going to do what’s right for … the country. He’s going to speak out. And he’s going to, you know, implement his views as he sees fit. … I see no conflict in that.”
According to Michelle Obama, her affiliation with WAL-MART through the sinecure she held at TreeHouse Foods, does not “necessarily matter.” In fact, she “sees no conflict in it,” as Barack will “say what needs to be said” in order to win the Presidency.
But the cynicism does not stop there. Here is Barack Obama in the London Telegraph:
Sen Obama’s campaign team and Mrs Obama’s spokesman did not respond to requests by The Sunday Telegraph for comment. But the senator previously told Crain’s Chicago Business magazine that, while his views on corporate reform and social justice remained the same regardless of what happens at Treehouse, “Michelle and I have to live in the world and pay taxes and pay for our kids and save for retirement”.
So for Obama it is just a bunch of words: he and Michelle can profit from WAL-MART through a company that is one of its biggest allies, for they have to take care of their own.
That Obama’s opposition to WAL-MART is just a bunch of words is admitted by a spokesman the Obama campaign managed to find to defend this conflict of interest. Chris Kofinis, Communications Director of WakeUpWalMart.org, just one of many activist groups who oppose WAL-MART, made the following excuses for Obama:
“Many companies do business with Wal-Mart,” said Chris Kofinis, communications director for WakeUpWalMart.com, a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. “The difference is whether one stays silent on Wal-Mart’s negative business practices or not. Sen. Obama has not stayed silent, and he should be applauded for that.”
So for Kofinis, who ostensibly opposes WAL-MART, endorses doing business with WAL-MART. And for him, mere words are enough. Since the Obama campaign’s opposition to WAL-MART is just words, I imagine Kofinis, who is just one of many critics, and not necessarily the most effective critic, is satisfied with these mere words. But what about the $100,000 the Obama family now possesses as a result of their collusion with WAL-MART?
It is significant that the Obama’s view opposition to WAL-MART as so many words to be uttered during a campaign. Obama is from Chicago, and the Chicago City Council voted to force stores such as WAL-MART to pay living wages, not minimum wages, if they were to build facilities in the City of Chicago. The vote on the Big Box Ordinance occurred in late July 2006. Richard Daley vetoed it on September 11, 2006, when Bush was visiting Chicago. This was Daley’s first veto after serving as Mayor of Chicago in 17 years. All this occurred while Michelle Obama sat on the Board of the WAL-MART friendly company.
Barack Obama endorsed Daley for Mayor in January 2007. And Michelle Obama was still on the Board of Tree House Foods when this endorsement occurred. And Obama made this endorsement despite all the reports on cronyism and corruption in City Hall. In fact, Obama ran into trouble with Daley in 2005 after making comments about Daley’s corruption.
Why the reverse on his stance on corruption? Did it have anything to do with WAL-MART, the Big Box Ordinance and his wife’s affiliation with a WAL-MART friendly company? And if Obama is so vocal in his opposition to WAL-MART, why endorse a Mayor who vetoed a bill that would force WAL-MART to change its corporate policies,? Is this not what Obama says they should do when engaging with AFL-CIO voters? Or is it all just words? Or is it just words in the right place at the right time? To quote Michelle Obama again:
Barack is gonna say what needs to be said, and it’s not going to, you know, necessarily matter…
Indeed, it will not necessarily matter, for the Obamas have their $100,000, and WAL-MART has an ally in Chicago City Hall.
I respectfully disagree. I heard Obama give the best answer re: Wal-Mart I’ve ever heard. Like many of Obama’s answers, it was intelligent and nuanced–and so it doesn’t fit well into sound bytes. But put aside the political opposition as I try to summarize what he said.
Wal-mart has succeeded world wide primarily because it has the best supply chain system ever invented. Arkansas knows what size the average shopper in Northern Michigan, whether the Florida laundress likes powder or liquid, and you don’t see racks and racks of wasted products at half off every week. This is something we should admire.
We can’t blame Wal-mart for a supply chain that relies (at least 80 percent) on China. That’s a result of our economy, and the fact that we’ve put two useless wars on our Chinese credit card. It’s also a result of the fact that this administration has refused to enforce even the slight efforts at worker and environmental protections built into trade agreements.
On the other hand, the Big Box stores have created pressures for us to do more driving, less walking and to use our money for their delivery system. That’s a societal problem. Since Levittown, Americans have treasured acres of useless (but well fertilized and watered) lawns at the expense of gas and their health.
And finally, of course, Wal-mart’s two track hiring system keeps employees (especially women and seniors) from ever being eligible for true advancement–and this is a real problem that Obama admits and commits to fight. (There are actually some flip side benefits to this for the very poor. Wal-mart doesn’t hesitate to hire mentally challenged and very old employees because it knows they won’t automatically progress to greater benefits. If a 70 year old needs extra money to replace a car or get Christmas gifts for the grand-kids, who else will hire him? That’s bad for other employees, but good for them.)
And then there are the prices. Economists have said that if it hadn’t been for Wal-mart, the Bush recession would have been devastating on America’s poor. Ask a person on child support or unemployment where they shop.
So it’s important to take a hard look at the corporation. In some ways, “the enemy is us.” Wal-mart isn’t the only corporation that is trashing the rights of workers in this country. We all need to developed a renewed appreciation of the labor movement and how important it is for all of us. My grandmother helped with the “Battle of the Overpass” (unionization of Ford Workers) and we’ve been union families ever since. It’s important to fight the voices that have demonized legitimate efforts to respect worker rights without demonizing people who just need less expensive laundry detergent.
Don’t trash Obama (and his wife) for taking a nuanced view of a situation. Your “evidence” includes second-hand relationships. Putting our heads in the sand, and ignoring the benefits that Wal-mart gives the very poor, isn’t sensible. And BTW, Chicago/Illinois politics is just a little more old fashioned than most of the rest of the nation.
Do you have a link for all this? And do you find these answers compelling? And how will he address those problems if he thinks they are so successful and wonderful? And why would Obama endorse someone who vetoed a bill that would force Wal-Mart to pay a living wage?
I don’t have a link handy but will work on it…Realize that the last few paragraphs are my own, of course.
When one endorses a candidate, there isn’t always just one issue involved. Who were the opponents? My union colleagues often consider fighting Wal-mart the biggest challenge in politics. I guess I consider the issue bigger; Wal-mart thrives because of political, economic and (urban) environmental situations that we’ve created and supported. We love driving, and disrespect unions. So you can’t simply identify a single candidate on that one issue. And that’s what Obama answered–“It’s complex…there’s good news and bad…”
Unfortunately, I think that sort of nuanced answer (which is great if you are President and actually have to think about issues) wins elections today.
Triangulating on Wal-Mart? It makes sense, given that he needed Daley’s endorsement and given that his wife was earning money and serving on a board from a company that was the biggest client of the distributor on whose board she served. But if he is such a big opponent, and that is how he represents himself to unions, specifically the AFL-CIO in Trenton, NJ, then he should have came out in favor of the Ordinance and against Daley’s veto. He did not. And the potential conflict of interest does not look in that respect.
Nuanced need not always be a synonym for triangulation and equivocation, but in the case of Obama on WAL-MART, it is.
A second question:
Does the fact that a vendor sells to Wal-mart make it evil? What were the employment policies of that company? To say: “We refuse to sell to Wal-mart…” would be a death knell to a company that competed in its area. What makes a company “Wal-mart friendly?”
Please don’t construe any of this to be any sort of defense of Wal-mart at all. I’m just suggesting that on tenuous evidence and one issue, you are impuning Obama. Look harder into overall attitude toward labor.
Wal-Mart was their biggest customer. And many remarked in the press how the connection was indeed controversial.
Was that ordinance within the scope of his responsibility as a state senator? Did he have to declare a position on a City of Chicago ordinance?
He is the Senator of Illinois, and he is a citizen of the city of Chicago. As a Senator and a citizen, he has the right to pressure Aldermen and Alderwomen to override a veto. They did not have the votes, and Obama remained silent. But notice he runs to NJ after he declares for President and makes all these wild claims about how he opposes WAL-MART, although he remained silent in Chicago while his wife was raking in the dough through one of their major allies. If he is as opposed as he claimed before the AFL-CIO in Trenton, NJ, then he would have been a vocal supporter of the Big Box Ordinance in chicago in 2006 when it was passed and then vetoed by Daley. He was, after all, a community organizer.
That’s the catch 22 with Wal-Mart. If you are an advocate for people on unemployment, single mothers, the truly poor, how can you tell them not to shop there? If you know they are otherwise forced to shop at inner city neighborhood stores that charge twice as much for the same basic foods, can you actually believe that a discount store would be bad for them?
What’s terrible for working men and women is the way that the really poor in this country survive. The picture is not as black and white as you make it seem. An advocate for the poor is not likely to be totally against a discount store coming to the inner city–many beg for that to happen.
That is the problem here. Her company profits from the Daley veto. That is why Obama was silent, and that is why she resigned in May, for they did not want anyone to notice. And that is why Daley and Obama endorsed one another within a period of two weeks.